Death and Nightwing
by fallen2far
Summary: An elseworlds where Nightwing is confronted by one he knows too well.


Hello.

This is just a writing exercise more than a story. There's no action or plot, just observation. Read if you'd like… critique if you must, but this is more for me.

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I have a job to do. I've just done it.

There are so many that blame me for this job I do. Obviously when a person is murdered, they blame the murderer, when they die of a disease, they blame the virus, but when people see me so much… They blame me.

Good or bad… they're both judgments of what I do. Objective points of view. I could say they mean nothing, but that would be a lie. One thing I learned… throughout all the cosmoses, stars, billions and trillions of lives… it'll never have any sway over what I do.

I just am.

But, I just said that it wasn't meaningless… well, it's not. Every once and a while, I return to the land of the living to remind myself of what life means. In these times, I realize the feeling of unfairness and loneliness that comes with life and death. Originally, I felt that it didn't matter… but those feelings do exist. I can't deny them any more than I could the ankh around my neck.

I've done it for centuries. As the organisms began getting more emotional, I began having feelings about what I was doing. That died as I realized its importance. Recently, I've found myself drawn to one particular unimportant planet on the outskirts of an unimportant galaxy. There, creativity and beauty isn't of particular importance, but its emotion and ideals attract me.

I've watched more life here than most anywhere else. Of coarse everyone is obsessed with the life of Superman and the determination of Batman… but I found myself drawn towards the unknown heroes. One hero's cry for release from her life. Another's initiation to the world of magic. There are so many instances where I found myself drawn to certain types.

Tonight , I was drawn to another.

I'd seen him practically his whole life. More so than most people in his universe. No one knows me in this universe like he does.

Perhaps I misspoke. I'm very familiar with assassins and murderers who've taken lives in the hundreds. I know of the kings and the dictators that have led their armies to slaughter continents. I'm extremely familiar with the works of Darkseid and Lucifer.

This is quite the opposite of that. I've seen firefighters, policemen, soldiers bury hundreds of friends…. I've seen them fail to save people from burning buildings or crossfire, but never had I seen someone so much of a glutton for punishment as this Grayson fellow.

He literally blames himself for the deaths of thousands of people. There was a whole city he wanted to protect and failed. That is merely the basis of connections he has to those that have parted recently. I've lost count of the people he was emotionally involved with that I've taken to what's next. Either he tried to teach them, save them or be with them; however strong the connection, he kept making them almost in defiance of me.

Recently, I'd taken one of the closest people in his life. A younger brother of sorts. It was a terrible ordeal involving the Joker a man I know far too well for my tastes Two-Face and a lowly henchman calling himself Shrike. A woman named Cassie was also involved, but in the final desperate moment, it was Shrike that cut down Robin with his blade.

He'd climbed his way to the top of a skyscraper. He was successful in preventing more death that night, but the damage was done. That was a mere three hours ago…

As it was, he had climbed to the top of an elaborate skyscraper. His costume was torn in several different places. The ones on his legs and one on his left arm cut the skin and blood was trickling down. His face was slightly swollen along the left side of his face.

He sat on the ledge, hugging one leg. The position looked painful, it looked like it aggravated the wound. He was in some trance, staring at a ten millimeter long blade coated in blood to the handle.

I approached him along the ledge and stopped right by him and sat down.

"That would probably look better if you cleaned it off a little."

He turned his head slightly toward me, but never really looked at me. He paused. Then he looked away.

"Why are you here?"

"You looked like you needed someone to talk to."

He tossed the knife to his left away from both of us. He looked to where it landed. And then back at me. At first I thought he was looking me… challenging me to get him to open up, but I could almost read every word of what he was thinking from his expression. "What was there to say."

"Am I at least breaking even?"

I smile. "You did save the world once or twice."

There was definitely a jarring feeling I felt for a moment. He knew who I was. That's actually not happened often… and so quickly.

"So, you're not creeped out by my being here?"

"Not anymore."

We just sat there for a few minutes, staring at the city. Gotham City. So much of everything. Life and death. Corruption and greed. Selfishness and selflessness. From this height you could only really see the building skyline with scattered lights in their valleys.

"Why?"

"Everyone asks that, love. The answer is whatever you determine it to be."

"No, I don't mean that. I mean, 'Why me?'."

"Oh, well, you know there is no real answer for that."

"Don't tell me that. I feel like I'm surrounded by this. My parents. All of the friends I grew up with, the people I walk down the streets with… in fact the closer they are, the more likely they'll die."

"You know the answer. You go to find danger to save people for tat briefest of moments in time. Save them from that moment. But it's only for that moment.

"Then, people emulate you. You're not like Superman. People recognize you as human, so they feel they can do what you do. They flirt with danger as closely as you do ."

"So I have to let them die another time by saving them?"

"It's the nature of your business. You try to save peoples lives for that short amount of time. Even the souls that your mentor saves, I claim. The only difference is that you get close to them afterwards. After you save them. If you want me to convince you to keep fighting, that is only your decision to make."

I sat there a few more moments looking at the city. It was so vast and barren from up there. The life was so distant. It reminded me of why I make myself mortal sometimes. To get closer. To get a break from the distance.

I looked back at him.

"So. How did you know who I was so early?"

Nightwing looked at me and smiled. "You're on the seventieth floor of a skyscraper. There's no way you could have come up here in a tight black dress and all that jewelry without crinkling your clothes."

"I could've been a meta."

"We'd be fighting now if you were."

"You don't think that's being prejudge mental?"

"No… just experience."

He laughed lightly for a minute. I laughed as well. I waited for a moment. I had to leave, so I got up to walk away. Before I left, I had to ask. "What did you decide?"

"Of coarse I'm going to keep doing it."

"Why?"

"For those briefest of moments."

"You know, I can't tell if we're similar or the exact opposite."

Grayson looked back at the city. "Yeah, I get that a lot."

I knew at that moment I was going to regret taking him when his time comes.


End file.
